Class 12 board exams are considered to be the final rite of passage in the lives of school students who often feel jittery considering that their higher education is dependent on their scores in these exams. Mathematics happens to be one of those peculiar subjects that is considered to be tough and high-scoring at the same time, and many students pin their hopes of achieving their dream percentage by achieving a perfect score in this exam.

On Monday, however, lakhs of students affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education seemed to have been left stumped by their maths exam. Many complained that the question paper was “lengthy” and “tricky”. These complaints soon snowballed into outrage and reverberated in Parliament, with Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu promising on Wednesday that he will take up the matter with Human Resources Development minister Smriti Irani.

Soon enough, there were a flurry of online petitions about the same started by concerned students from across the country urging the government to direct the board to either provide marks leniently or conduct the exam again. These protests, in turn, seem to have softened the CBSE’s stand, which had earlier denied reports of the same paper being leaked on WhatsApp days before the exam, as it now has now promised to form a committee to look into concerns expressed by parents and students.

The board has also said that it will take “remedial measures” before evaluating the papers. But nobody is sure on what these measures will be, particularly because the maths teachers who spoke to Scroll said that the student dissatisfaction could be stemming not from how difficult the paper was but from sky-high expectations and parental pressure to score a perfect score in the subject.

Great expectations

Amit Bajaj, head of department of mathematics at CRPF Public School in Rohini, New Delhi, said that students are going by past papers and scores in the exam so they are worried they won’t score as well as their teachers or parents might expect them to.

“I have seen the paper and it was completely from the syllabus prescribed by the board and the National Council of Educational Research and Training textbooks,” Bajaj said. He added that students are more focussed on scoring on their immediate exams rather than learning the concepts which could have a bearing on their perceptions of the paper.

“The paper was largely application-based so one needs to know the underlying concept before attempting a question, so it can’t be that the paper was tough for all. Those who studied throughout the year have not found it hard or lengthy,” Bajaj said.

"Everyone is taught from the beginning that maths is a paper where 100 marks are not only achievable but necessary," Bajaj added. "So students expect a paper like that and that can't always happen especially since cut-offs are rising."

Another teacher at a government school in Delhi spoke on condition of anonymity and said that it was clear beforehand to all teachers that the papers this year will be tougher than usual because the quality of education is deteriorating.

“The students are just used to practicing and learning each question given in their textbooks which takes them away from actually using these concepts later,” she said. “Last year’s paper was a cakewalk for every student and I think that has influenced this year’s paper since it has definitely increased a notch in difficulty level but that doesn’t mean that it’s out of syllabus or undoable. The whole idea of examinations is to test students.”

Subhashini Venkatesan, a mathematics teacher in Pune who teaches state board students, said that these concerns have a pattern of cropping up every few years.

“This is a story of almost every other year that students complain that the mathematics paper wasn’t upto their expectations but we have to understand that the paper tests your understanding and it may not live up to your expectations if you just go by the sample papers provided by the board which are supposed to be just a guide not the actual paper,” she explained.

Venkatesan added that even the state boards receive these complaints quite often, but that has more to do with how students are being taught.

“Rote learning can never work in maths and those who expect to get the same questions as they solve in their textbooks should prepare harder for an exam like this,” she said.

Structural problems

Teachers say that similar discontent is expressed by students about questions in board exams about one paper or another, which could point to structural problems that exist in pedagogy or testing. This also gets reflected in different accounts given by students for the same paper.

Maths, however, features frequently as one of the papers that students routinely report finding tough, and not up to their expectations. Last year's paper considered easy by teachers and a section of students, was called a "torture" for others by news reports claiming that some students were left in tears after the exam. The issue then was of high-difficulty level questions called HOTS which generally make 10-15% of the paper and test the ability of even the brightest students.

In 2013, a student reportedly committed suicide over tough questions in his maths exam. Similar complaints of tricky questions were also reported in 2014, 2012 and 2011 as well, in varying numbers.

For instance, even this year's mathematics paper which is the flash point of current outrage was described as easy and “relieving” to exam-takers, according to a report in Jagran. “Like last year, the paper this year was easy as well. Students felt relieved after writing the exam,” the report said.

That such complaints are routine is also apparent from the fact that even the English exam this year was described as “lengthy” by students according to some news reports. While the English paper didn’t face as much criticism, teachers are confident that the board will take some action to make sure students don’t suffer in mathematics.

“There is a committee being constituted by the HRD ministry and the board which is considering all aspects of the situation,” Amit Bajaj said. “The most they will do is increase the weightage of first few steps in questions that were deemed tough by students so as to benefit those who tried. There will be some sort of compensation in marking, but there’s no question of re-taking the exam.”